LACAN
Gale M. Thompson
Critical Writing Sample
“But What Word Was it Writing?”: A Lacanian Reading of Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, a great deal of attention has been paid by critics to the sexuality in the relationship between Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton, or to the implications of shell shock on Septimus Smith. One critic, calling Septimus “Virginia Woolf’s brain-damaged casualty” (Restuccia 46), tries to utilize a Lacanian reading, but ultimately applies the theory to the character of his “mirror,” Clarissa Dalloway. Septimus Warren Smith’s tragic death, however, can be attributed to his failure to obtain Lacan’s version of the Real. Septimus, whose own unconscious can be found in parts of the novel, has deluded himself into thinking that he can grasp the Real and know the contents of his unconscious. When he recognizes that he cannot master the Symbolic and obtain the Real, he commits suicide by flinging himself out of the window onto the railings, what could be symbolized as the Real.
Symbols of the unconscious exist in major elements of the novel. Similar to Lacan’s statement in his seminar on Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” that the letter itself is a symbol of the unconscious, it can be discerned that in Mrs. Dalloway, the sky-writing airplane and the letters it attempts to form perform a similar function (Lacan, 39). This particular scene, in which it seems that all of London is staring up into the sky at an airplane, letters appear in the sky for a moment, then dissipate before anyone can see what they actually say. The fact that the meaning of the letters is unattainable can represent how one cannot obtain the contents of the unconscious. The absence of the meaning, however, is of great importance to the characters of the novel, and each character makes out a different meaning in what the plane actually writes:
But what letters? A C was it? An E, then an L? Only for a moment did they lie still;
Critical Writing Sample
“But What Word Was it Writing?”: A Lacanian Reading of Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, a great deal of attention has been paid by critics to the sexuality in the relationship between Clarissa Dalloway and Sally Seton, or to the implications of shell shock on Septimus Smith. One critic, calling Septimus “Virginia Woolf’s brain-damaged casualty” (Restuccia 46), tries to utilize a Lacanian reading, but ultimately applies the theory to the character of his “mirror,” Clarissa Dalloway. Septimus Warren Smith’s tragic death, however, can be attributed to his failure to obtain Lacan’s version of the Real. Septimus, whose own unconscious can be found in parts of the novel, has deluded himself into thinking that he can grasp the Real and know the contents of his unconscious. When he recognizes that he cannot master the Symbolic and obtain the Real, he commits suicide by flinging himself out of the window onto the railings, what could be symbolized as the Real.
Symbols of the unconscious exist in major elements of the novel. Similar to Lacan’s statement in his seminar on Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” that the letter itself is a symbol of the unconscious, it can be discerned that in Mrs. Dalloway, the sky-writing airplane and the letters it attempts to form perform a similar function (Lacan, 39). This particular scene, in which it seems that all of London is staring up into the sky at an airplane, letters appear in the sky for a moment, then dissipate before anyone can see what they actually say. The fact that the meaning of the letters is unattainable can represent how one cannot obtain the contents of the unconscious. The absence of the meaning, however, is of great importance to the characters of the novel, and each character makes out a different meaning in what the plane actually writes:
But what letters? A C was it? An E, then an L? Only for a moment did they lie still;
Cited: Dowling, David. Mrs. Dalloway: Mapping Streams of Consciousness. Boston: Twain Publishers, 1991. Emig, Rainer Gamble, Isabel. “Clarissa Dalloway’s ‘Double’.” Critics on Virginia Woolf. Ed. Jacqueline E.M. Latham. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1979. 52-56. Graham, John Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’.” The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. Ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. 28-54. --- Restuccia, Frances L. Amorous Acts: Lacanian Ethics in Modernism, Film, and Queer Theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Woolf, Virginia of Chicago Press, 1989. Kelly, Alice van Buren